Vine and Dine.
As always, started by listing as many possible ideas as I could for what this feature could be about. I looked at possibly wine reviews, or vineyard reviews and then decided that there were two avenues I would like to pursue - I liked the idea of a still life style photograph, using either cheese and wine, or a feature on a recipe that involved using wine as an ingredient. I came up with the idea of basing the style of photograph on painting of food and wine, and looked on the internet at several paintings that I felt had the 'feel' I wanted to achieve.
I liked both these paintings by Cezanne
I liked the often 'rustic' feel of a lot of the art work that I looked at, and also the way that a lot of attention is paid to the textures and colour of the food stuff featured.
To help create the 'rustic' feel, I used again a small bale of hay, and also a wooden board. For the 'recipe' section, I bought a casserole serving dish in a burnt orange colour that I felt would compliment the other colours, and also brought along some of the raw ingredients I'd used to make the bourguignon.
Here are some of the images from the recipe shoot
I then moved on to photographing a selection of different cheeses with the wine.
I was really happy with the images I got from these two shoots, so then moved onto adding text
The text on this one is too big and too dark
This one, with white text that is smaller, I think works much better.
Again - text too big and intrusive
And in all these images, I needed to go back into photoshop, and 'clean' up areas like blemishes on the veg shown, and gravy marks on the side of the dish.
This image is more how I think the final page could and should look, and I think that there are several of the images I got, both with the cheese and with the recipe shoot, that could be used in this manner.
Pass the Pasta.
Immeadiately I think of pasta and the image that comes to mind is a family meal, possibly al fresco - and all the idea's that I liked that I had around this catagory had this idea of 'families' at the base.
I thought about doing a restaurant review, and approached the local Frankie and Benny's restaurant - this specialises in pasta and pizza dishes, and is a very typical 'family' restaurant. The manager and staff were very happy for me to come in and take photographs, and very kindly furnished me with the area managers phone number, to just confirm with her that it would be OK - several phone calls where I'd left messages and four frustrating weeks on, and I had to abandon this idea, as the area manager didn't get back to me - having wasted all this time waiting to hear from her, I had meanwhile started to pursue another idea, and given the ever looming hand in date for the work in this and the other two modules, I decided in the end to stick with the other idea.
The other idea came again from the whole idea of families - I started thinking about a recipe section based on pasta meals for children - I thought that this idea could convey the idea that pasta meals are fun for kids, and maybe appeal to parents who had 'fussy' eaters.
So, studio booked, spaghetti and meatballs cooked, and youngest daughter dragged into the studio to eat a plate of pasta - at 10.30 in the morning - Thank you Katie - you were a wee star !
I really loved a lot of the images I got - Kate enjoys this type of food, and got stuck in, and I just fired off shot after shot .
Then I looked at putting the images together, and/or with text
I liked the idea of using a tryptic presentation
This photograph was probably the one I liked best out of all the shots I took .
And I liked it presented both as a piece on its own, and combined with smaller images, to create the final pieces.
I really enjoyed this unit, out of all the briefs we had in the modules this semester, this 'illustrating a feature' was probably my favourite. I learn't a lot about photographing food under studio conditions, and it made me really think about the details - from the necessity of 'cleaning' up spills and blemishes, through to the type of text to use and how to research and develop idea's. I ended up producing a massive ammount of work, and did so under quite a tight deadline, when you consider how much other work there was in the 3 modules from this semester, and how we had all been hampered by lack of equipment and studio time, plus the fact that several of the film modules were extremely time consuming . Personally, I would rather have had a more balanced set of modules, because it did feel like priority was given to film, both in terms of our timetable and in terms of the briefs - this was the only photographic unit that I really felt I had been able to spend a lot of time on, and I would have loved the option of doing more briefs like this and dropping some of the film work. I understand that the degree I am doing is not called 'photography', but 'Creative Lens' - but I was under the impression that at least EQUAL consideration would be given to both until we got to the point where we were able to specialise, and I don't feel like the modules did offer me the opportunity to do that - the film modules that we HAD to do were for the most part, so time consuming that I couldn't spend an equal ammount of time on the photography. I'm assured that this will change in the next semester, and I really look forward to that.
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